After this slaughter what next?
Published:Friday | May 28, 2010 | 12:00 AM
The Editor, Sir:
The security forces took one step backwards on Monday because the trust and assistance that they were looking for from citizens of Tivoli and the wider West Kingston have gone out the window completely.
If they were acting on intelligence - which, in my view, is non-existent - the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) would have known that the person they were looking for was not there. So what was the intention of storming in there and killing masses of people? They have also gone to great lengths to hide bodies in the back of the May Pen Cemetery and, most important, not operating in transparency by allowing journalists to cover their operation. It seems that the operation was more about sending a message that they can kill anyone and get away with it.
This operation was purely based on what transpired in the media over the past two weeks where a wide cross-section of Jamaica was voicing their sentiments in the newspapers including, "kill up to the baby on the breast"; "flatten the place"; "wipe them out" etc. Such was the rhetoric being posted on newspaper websites and the army and the JCF seemed intent on doing just that.
Security forces gloating
Then for the last couple of days, the JCF and the army has been gloating about how many criminals have turned themselves in, hereby giving a false sense of change, clouding the outcome of this whole thing. Turning themselves in was more of a preventative act against being murdered. The security personnel will find nothing on most of them and will have to let them go once this whole thing has settled.
So the question to be asked is: After the slaughter of more than 100 people, traumatising the kids in that area, treating the people like animals and shooting at their houses if they even crack the windows, will this solve Jamaica's problems?
The security forces haven't got the man they were looking for nor most of his close affiliates; did not find any substantial weaponry and, most important, did not win the confidence of the lower echelons of society. As much as I would like to see Jamaica move forward and rid itself of crime, this is not the way!
I am, etc.,
DAM JUMAYCAN
Grand Cayman